STUPID, STUPID, STUPID.
What on earth had she done? Maria had fled the opulent ballroom of the Hotel La Sereine after her argument with Theo—shaking and shivering at the devastation she’d seen in both his and his fiancée’s eyes, the moment she’d accidentally revealed Theo’s plans to leave Sofia at the altar. Theo Tersi—the man she thought she’d loved for nearly six years.
But, she hadn’t. She’d realised it the moment she’d seen the horror and grief on the faces of the engaged couple. Nothing she’d ever felt for Theo had engendered that much...pain. Maria Rohan de Luen sucked in a huge lungful of air around the tears that were now freefalling from her cheeks. Tears for them, for herself. Because she knew that she’d destroyed something between them that she’d been looking for herself for so, so long. Knew that what she’d thought she’d felt for Theo was nothing more than the desperate need to...be loved?
She cursed herself for that weakness. Part of her desperately wanted to go back, to find Sofia and explain, to apologise to Theo...but truly she feared she’d do more harm than good and instead, after taking one step forward and one back, collapsed onto the soft grass banking the smooth, mirror-like surface of the lake stretching out beneath the night sky.
She resisted the urge to peek into the depths of the water, reluctant to see what would be reflected back at her. Her hand grasped the cool glass neck of the bottle of champagne she’d been blindly holding as she’d hurled words that threatened to sever the bond between two people who very clearly loved each other. She’d never much had a taste for the stuff, but if there was ever a time to get blind drunk, at twenty-two years old, Maria decided that surely now was it.
Part of her was conscious that she was on the verge of over-indulging in self-pity, and the other part wanted to punish, believing that she didn’t even deserve that selfish act. Not after what she’d just done.
Theo, her older brother’s best friend, had loomedlarge in her life, ever since her sixteenth birthday. Sebastian and Theo had become almost instantly joined at the hip after a mutually beneficial business deal and there wasn’t a family memory in the last six years that didn’t have them both in it. Maria bit back a laugh at her inner thought’s use of the word ‘family’. She hadn’t seen her father or stepmother in almost eighteen months. And she was fine with that. In some ways they factored so little in her day to day life that occasionally a random thought or memory would catch her by surprise and remind her of them.
She wondered what her father would think of her and what had just happened. He’d probably give her that gaze, the one that said he wasn’t really seeing her, but another woman—one he had loved so all-consumingly that he’d not been able to recover from the loss of her. Then he’d almost start when Maria would speak because it only served to show that she wasn’t her mother, no matter how similar they might have looked.
She had nothing else of her mother, no memories, no heirlooms—Valeria, her stepmother, had seen to that—save but one necklace. The one she wore, always, even though it served as both an anchor and a homage to a woman who had died giving her life.
So no, while exiled Duke Eduardo Rohan de Luen would have been as ineffectual as always on the subject of what had just happened, Valeria would have sniffed in contempt and been only gleeful whilst declaring that she’d always known ‘that boy’, Theo Tersi, would cause nothing but trouble.
And Theo’s crime? Guilt by association. Valeria had never forgiven Sebastian for the drastic measures he’d had to take to save their family from complete and utter destruction. When Maria had been eight, Eduardo had doubled down on an incredibly risky oil investment in the Middle East and lost not only his own money, but a large portion belonging to other members of Spain’s nobility. A shocking and shameful moment that had seen the Rohan de Luens exiled from Spain, yet allowed to keep their hereditary title.
The only thing that had kept them from bankruptcy had been Seb who, at eighteen, had taken control of the financial purse strings and done what was needed. This included selling off almost every single piece of property and valuable item that wasn’t nailed down. And for a woman who had only married Eduardo for prestige and money, Valeria hadn’t taken it well at all.
For Maria? It had meant leaving behind everything she’d ever known, moving to Italy from Spain, and starting all over again. But in her heart, she’d known that the damage was already done. Suddenly unsure about even the most seemingly permanent things in life, Maria had withdrawn from friends and education, choosing instead to lose herself in her art and sculpture.
Until London’s Camberwell College of Arts had accepted her on a foundation course, and she’d fallen utterly in love with the place, the people and the freedom she’d found away from her family. The friends she’d made during her degree, the little flat-share she lived in... Now, sitting on the bank of the river, all she wanted was to be back there.
She groaned out loud into the night sky and pressed the heels of her palms into the orbs of her eyes.
Oh, God, what had she done?
‘Is this seat taken?’
From the first moment Matthieu had seen the figure down by Lac Peridot, some strange sense of self-preservation told him to walk away. Run. From the empty veranda sweeping around the ballroom of the Iondorran hotel where a charity gala was being held, he’d seen the white lace dress worn by the dark-haired woman glowing in the moonlight. Tendrils of her long, gently curled hair had hung almost down to her hips and the sudden memory of his mother’s favourite painting stole his breath. He’d not seen or thought of the painting for years and when the figure had turned, for just a moment, back to the ballroom, something in her features, as clearly picked out by the moonbeams as her dress, had called to him as if across the years.
Matthieu Montcour knew better than to approach a woman so clearly lost in her own private thoughts, but he couldn’t help himself. There was something almost tragically beautiful about her. And Matthieu had had his fair share of tragedy. He knew how life could be one thing in one moment and an entirely new thing in another.
He’d been about to turn away from the figure and the direction of thoughts he rarely visited, when he saw her inexpertly take a swig from the champagne bottle, failing to account for the back flow of the bubbles, and nearly smiled as the froth rushed from the mouth of the bottle forcing the woman to lean out of the way as the alcohol funnelled onto the grass beside her. Nearly smiled, because smiling was something Matthieu did very little of. The figure gave up, indelicately wiping her mouth with the back of her wrist, placing the bottle in the nest of skirts she’d made between her legs and went back to studying the lake. The carelessness about her clothing spoke to her distraction. This was no skilled seductress, his usual preferred companion. There was an innocence about her, shining, glowing, and all the more reason for him to stay away. But something about her drew him in—even though he was the last person to play white knight. No. He was the beast that mothers warned their daughters about.
Yet for the first time in years, he simply couldn’t deny himself the urge to take a closer look at the woman who had caught his eye and imagination. He’d stepped away from the veranda, leaving the sights and sounds of the ballroom behind him, and slowly padded his way over the soft grass, pulling up about a metre away from where she sat.
‘Is this seat taken?’
She started, peering up at him from her seat on the grass, momentary shock painting her features that righted themselves back to neutral. He’d chosen English—it being the most widely used at the gala and, as such, he figured it a safe bet, given that it was highly unlikely she spoke Swiss French.
‘Standing room only, I’m afraid.’
Her response surprised him, as much as her gentle European accent. Spanish perhaps? Maybe Italian? Taking his shock for